


Absolution

by devilinthedetails



Category: Memory Sorrow and Thorn - Tad Williams
Genre: Absolution, Adultery, Betrayal, Confession, Forgiveness, Gen, Guilt, Infidelity, Mercy - Freeform, Redemption, Sorrow, Suffering, secret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 17:42:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17430536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: Camaris makes his confession to Father Strangyeard.





	Absolution

Absolution 

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” Camaris expected to stumble–as he had fallen into sin with Efiathe–over the opening of a rite he had once participated in every week, confessing all his minor misdeeds until the day he had ultimately found himself incapable of seeking absolution for his one great and terrible transgression. Instead the words flowed from his mouth like milk from a mother’s breast, a perfect recitation of agonizingly sublime memory from a time when he had been pure as lamb’s wool, too innocent to imagine dishonoring the woman he loved and betraying his best friend, the king he had sworn to serve to his last breath, in the process. “It has been...” 

For the first time, Camaris stuttered in his speech. How long had it been since his last confession? After his beloved Rose of Hernysadharc had paid with her life’s blood giving birth to the son of their sin of the flesh, Camaris had fled to the arms of Mother Church, praying for refuge and discovering only torment. The wage of sin was death, and after mankind’s first disobedience, the Aedon had decreed that every women must suffer and bleed in childbirth. The wage of his and Efiathe’s sin had been her bloody death in childbirth...

When he knelt before Elysia, the blessed Mother of Usires and the saint to whom he was most devoted, appealing for her intercession every night before he slept, he had seen no compassion or forgiveness on her unblemished marble face. In her sacred statue eyes, he had stared into a cold judgment that promised him more damnation than salvation. When he bowed before Usires on the Tree, he felt not hope but despair reflecting on how Usires, like Efiathe, had suffered and died for his sins. Since he had known even in his graceless state that it was unpardonable blasphemy and unholy heresy for him to compare the woman he had loved more than his now damned soul to Usires, he had left the church bearing the full weight of his guilt and never again had the courage to seek absolution for his unforgivable sin. 

“Too long since my last confession,” he admitted at last because that was the only true measure of the time he had borne the shame of his secret sin. 

“I see you have long suffered.” Father Strangyeard squinted at him in a way that made it difficult to believe that he could see much of anything beyond his own nose, but at least there was sympathy, not condemnation in his gaze, though Camaris suspected that would change once the vileness of his sin was revealed. “I can offer you the peace of the Aedon through the mercy of Usires, His Son.”

“I betrayed my king.” Camaris was astonished to discover that it was a relief to confess his depravity even if it meant harsh judgment. Nobody, not even Aedon or Mother Church, could condemn him more horribly than he had himself. “I swore fealty to him, and I loved him, but not, Usires save me, more than I loved his wife. I loved his wife more than he did–he never even called her by her preferred name, her birth name–and I lay with her though I knew it was a sin.” 

“To love her wasn’t a sin though to bed her was.” Father Strangyeard’s face showed none of the wrath of Aedon about to hurl a lightning bolt at a sinner but only a mournful gentleness that somehow made the memory and consequences of Camaris’s sin with Efiathe more painful. 

“It’s worse than that.” Camaris pinched the bridge of his nose. He had never been able to confess his and Efiathe’s infidelity to Prester John even after Efiathe’s death because he had feared that Efiathe’s unfaithfulness would cast a doubt on Elias’s legitimacy, ruining the beautiful memory that was all that remained of his Rose of Hernysadharc and risking civil war. Now that civil war had broken out, and Camaris was even more bound to maintain his lie for the good of the realm. “Josua was the product of our adulterous union. He is illegitimate, and his claim to the throne built on a lie I dare not expose for fear undermining Josua when he needs to overthrow Elias to prevent all of Osten Ard from coming to grief.” 

“I see the weight of your sorrow and will not add to it.” Father Strangyeard appeared almost hunchbacked as if Camaris’s confession was crushing him–as if the guilt and condemnation that should have belonged forever to Camaris had somehow been transferred into him as it had been into Efiathe, who had died because of it. “You can take solace in the blessed assurance that Usires suffered on the Tree for your sin, feeling the pain of it so you wouldn’t have to bear it. You are brave to make this confession.” 

“I’m not brave.” Camaris shook his head, somehow irritated rather than flattered that Father Strangyeard would still believe him to be the courageous embodiment of knighthood after he had admitted to the ultimate cowardice. “After the woman I loved more than my life and soul died, I tried to kill myself at sea, but I–who had slain a thousand people when I didn’t want to–couldn’t end my misery even when that was the deepest, most desperate desire of my wicked heart.” 

“Aedon wouldn’t allow you to die because He still had a purpose for you as He does for every life He creates and sustains by His grace.” Father Strangyeard rested a gnarled, varicose palm on Camaris’s shoulder. “That purpose was to love and guide your son, however sinfully he might have been conceived. Your only penance is that you must continue to love and serve your son, revealing the truth to him when you judge the time is right.” 

“I will, Father.” Camaris inclined his head, accepting his penance with the same grim resignation as he had his guilt. 

“Then I absolve you of your sin in the name of Usires and His Father, the Aedon.” Father Strangyeard sketched a Sign of the Tree, which reflexively mirrored, over Camaris. “Go now in peace to love and serve Usires, secure in the knowledge that he has forgiven you, and your only task now is to forgive yourself.” 

Camaris again bowed his head, hiding inside it his wry, irreverent thought that this was easier for Father Strangyeard, who by the laws of Mother Church had likely never loved or lain with anyone, to say than it ever would be for Camaris to do. He could only try to find redemption for himself by loving and serving his son. That was the last opportunity of atonement for a broken man.


End file.
